


The One where Marinette Dupain-Cheng is A Mage

by MaxDark158



Series: Max Dark's AUs [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Badass Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Confident Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Elemental Magic, Magic, Magic-Users, but anyone writing this, can add a relationship or two, i don't mention romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 03:40:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20221183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaxDark158/pseuds/MaxDark158
Summary: This is just another jumble of ideas for a fanfic I'll never write but I figured, once again, maybe someone may enjoy it? I don't still know what I'm doing but it worked the last time.Basically: Marinette Dupain-Cheng and some of her friends are Mages and live in a double world of magic and nonmagic, though I don't really talk much about how Mari struggles to keep all three of her lives balanced. She's still Ladybug in this after all.





	The One where Marinette Dupain-Cheng is A Mage

**Author's Note:**

> There are not many trigger warnings in this BUT I do briefly mention suicide, entitlement and murder. Proceed at your own risk but know that this is not fully written out thus does not go into detail on most of these things.
> 
> If there are any more tags I can add please tell me and if you see a typo yell at me in the comments

The World of Mages

Okay first to break down the whole Mages thing–

Mages are people who have magic. There isn’t anything different about them biologically from humans that can be detected by science, but there is a certain signature in their aura. The signature allows other Mages to tell who is and isn’t one of them, as all Mages can see auras.

There are three outlets for magical abilities in this world: Enchantment, Brewery, and Distinctive.

Enchantment is your Typical spells. These usually require wands, as it requires very direct and precise magic. Mages need to learn the spells and perform them right with the wand. Every Mage, no matter how powerful, is capable of learning spells and performing them. It’s similar to learning a skill. After time and effort eventually, anyone can be a master.

Charms are also a subcategory of Enchantment. They don’t need wands to be performed and are second nature to most Mages. They won’t even realize they cast a good luck spell when they wish their friend luck.

Brewery is the potions. While most assume that any person can make a potion if they know how to do it, that’s not how it works. Only Mages can properly make a potion. Humans who tried have died horrible deaths. The energy a potion needs in order to be made either feeds off an individual’s magic or their life force and if you don’t have the former the potion will use the latter. Potion making is a risky business, but many Mages like the challenge.

Distinctive is a Mages first manifestation of magic. It’s their superpower, in a way. Telepathy, Psychokinesis, and Element control are a few. These powers are able to appear like superpowers, though they are just the easiest output for any particular Mage. It takes less energy for a Mage to use their Distinctive magic than it takes for them to Enchant or Brew

Distinctive magic has different ranges in power. There are four levels of Distinctive Magic power: Scarce, Typical, Unique, and Extreme.

Scarce level people usually have very limited abilities. If their Distinctive magic is to understand animals, they can only talk to a certain species. Scarce Mages were once slaves to more powerful mages, and even today they are typically regarded as the less-abled ones, the ones in need of the most protection. Scarce magic users are, however, statistically the best at Enchantment and Brewery. Despite that, the stereotype remains.

Typical level people are the average. Back to the animal example, they would be able to understand to all of a type, like a mammal or a reptile. People with Typical magic are just normal. There isn’t really any bad stereotypes tied to them, and there are many Typicals that have done great things. They do have the appearance of being lackluster or boring compared to others.

Unique are powerful, they’re the leaders of the Mage world and usually looked up to as the best of the best. They’re the celebrities and usually the great heroes you hear about in stories, despite also being the Mages that most often had Scarces as slaves. They would be able to understand all animals on earth in our example. Despite nearly 40% of all Uniques going rouge, the entire group has the illusion of never causing harm, of helping others. Perhaps due to this, a recent statistic shows that just over 70% of Uniques have narcissistic views of themselves and their range.

Extreme are, while more powerful than Unique, hard to manage. Mages with extreme Distinctive magic are regarded as natural disasters. People believe them to be dangerous, or evil. They’re the inspiration for villainous magic users in Disney movies (they’re actually not) or why witch trials were once a thing (that’s actually a certain Unique’s fault, check your facts). One with extreme magic would not only be able to communicate with animals, but also control them. What society doesn’t seem to realize is that many Extremes are not able to control their own magic, and may not actually want to control the animals. Statistically, only 12% of Extremes go rouge, which is less than all the other levels. Though part of this may be because nearly 45% of extremes are killed in childhood by other Mages believing them to be dangerous, despite the (clearly incorrect) notion that Extreme Mage killing is a thing of the past.

Population wise, the percentage of Scarces is 26%, the percentage of Typicals is 55%, the percentage of Uniques is 15% and the percentage of Extremes is 4% in an average Mage population.

(Obviously, the average Extreme population would be higher without the 67% death rate* of those individuals before they reach the age of 16

*statistic includes 22% suicide rate)

* * *

LIST OF MAGES IN THE AU

Mages typically lean toward the arts as hobbies or interests because magic and art are intertwined. Below is the list of characters I personally like as Mages in this au but if you write this you can change who are and are not Mages. Not all artists are magic though, which is why Nathaniel and Rose are not on this list. Not all who are on this list are actively artists, but they have all shown appreciation for art or appreciation for people who do art.

Gina Dupain: Gina is an Extreme level with Augmentation magic. Augmentation magics can increase their strength and speed, can basically hulk out. Their magic color shows as the color their veins turn when they use their magic. Gina doesn’t use hers, because she can’t stop her augmentation once she starts. Someone else has to step in to stop her, which makes her dangerous. If she were to use full power, she would be able to run at the speed of sound and use the empire state building as a baseball bat without breaking a sweat. The times when she did use her magic it manifested as dark green. Because of her distrust in her magic, she doesn’t try to Enchant or Brew.

Juleka Couffaine: Juleka is a Scarce level Emotion magic. Juleka can sense the strongest emotion the person closest to her is feeling and can calm people down through touch. Her magic is purple, like her hair streaks. She senses emotions by just knowing the emotion the closest person is feeling. Juleka loves Brewing potions and is very good at it. She strives to learn the old ways of potion-making but also invent new ways, as many potions haven’t been updated for hundreds of years. Just because it works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved! She causes many explosions on the houseboat but her family is supportive

Luka Couffaine: Luka is a Typical level Emotion magic. Emotion magics are able to sense emotions and manipulate them through touch. Emotion magics magical color is the color their hand glows when they go to touch someone. He can sense the strongest emotion of everyone he is within ten feet of. He hears emotions as if they are a song to him. He can also calm people down through touch. His magic is blue, like his hair color.

Marc Anciel: Mark is an Extreme level with Psychokinesis magic. He can move things with his mind and create force fields. He has a lot of trouble controlling his magic, and typically avoids using it. The stigma in the magic world against him contributes to his anxiety. His magic is rose red. He makes wands explode like Marinette and is bad at potions.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng: Marinette is an Extreme level with Creative magic. Marinette can create anything and her creations are permanent. The only drawback for her is that everything she creates is blue, the color of her magic. Even if she creates 100% iron, the iron is blue despite bearing no naturally blue-colored particles. She doesn’t care for Enchantment, as her magic is often too powerful for most wands to handle, making them explode. Marinette is good at potions, but they aren’t her passion, which her father respects.

Sabine Cheng: Sabine is a Typical level with Creative magic. She can create objects that are smaller than her but they only last about a week before her magic dissolves. Her magic is silvery grey, and so are all the objects she creates. She prefers to use Enchantment magic most of the time though because the spells give her more variety. Many things in their home are Enchanted or charmed by Sabine, who is a natural with a wand.

Tom Dupain: Tom is a Scarce level with Augmentation magic. He is only able to double his strength and speed. His magic’s color is light green. He doesn’t honestly care for his magic though, preferring to be gentle. He does, however, love potions. He’s memorized how to make most potions and is even tutoring Juleka in the art of making potions. In the Mage Hall of Fame, he is known for being one of the only nine in history who can make a perfect luck potion. He is helping Juleka secure the spot as number ten.

Sabrina Raincomprix: Sabrina is a Scarce level with Healing magic. She can only get rid of pain, but she can’t actually cure the wound someone has. Her magic inspires her to become a doctor, so she can remove the pain a patient feels then actually do something about what’s causing the pain. She helps her dad with aches from his job a lot, though he isn’t magic (her mom was). Her magic manifests as an orange glow in her hands when she goes to heal. She is very good at Enchanting as well and can use Enchanting spells to heal what her magic is unable to fix.

Darya Anciel (OC): Darya is an Extreme level with Elemental magic. She can control the elements Water and Fire, though her control with Fire is not as good. Her magic is too powerful for Enchantment and she doesn’t care for Brewery much. She and Marc are not related by blood but they are both adopted by the same family. Her magic manifests as the color white, and her magic turns the water and fire she is controlling white (it becomes normal when she stops controlling it)

I also have a few ideas for Adrien, Alix, Chloe, Felix, Kagami, and Max to have magical abilities but they aren’t concrete and they vary depending on which interpretation of this au I’m thinking about. I’ll do a quick list of their abilities though.

Adrien Agreste: Unique Destruction magic, can destroy anything and he can control it, manifests as a neon green glow to his hand before he touches what he’s about to turn to dust

Alix Kubdel: Unique Elemental magic, can control air currents, manifests as a dark pink shimmer in the air she is controlling

Chloe Bourgeois: Extreme Telepathy magic, hears the thoughts of everyone within 200 feet of her and can control them, manifests as yellow glow in the eyes of those she is controlling. She wears something to cancel her magic abilities, usually her sunglasses, because she can’t handle her powers

Felix Culpa: Unique Mimic magic, his magic mimics the magic of the last person he touched, can go up to 75% of that magic’s power, his magic manifests as dark grey

Kagami Tsurugi: Typical Augmentation magic, can make her movements faster, manifests as a blood-red color to her veins

Max Kante: Unique Elemental magic, can control metal, manifests as grass green aura around the metal he is controlling

Honorable mentions, meaning I want them to be magic but I can’t figure out what their magic would be

Aurore

Jagged Stone

Madame Mendeleiev

Manon Chamack

Nadja Chamack

Penny Rolling

* * *

How Marinette Dupain-Cheng became the Leader of the French Mage Division

The Mage Society meets in the shadows. They hide from the human world because of events such as the witch trials or the holocaust. There are several divisions, one for each country – though smaller countries near each other will unify under one division because the Mage population is lower if they’re separate. For every thirty humans, there is one Mage – quite the difference.

Every seven years each division will hold a tournament. The tournament will not happen in the same year for all divisions, but for each individual division, it is seven years. This tournament decides the Mage Superior, their right hand, and their general.

The Mage Superior is the leader, the president of the division. They are meant to be the most powerful Mage as they are also the first line of defense for the community. In the Mage community, the age of being a legal adult is 16 because Mages tend to be the target of murder by humans and Mages both. The Mage Superior must be above 12 to run in the competition. Their identity must remain secret from the public unless they betray the division or become corrupt. When crimes are committed by the Mage Superior, their identity will be outed by the General and the Right Hand, who all share identities. The Mage Superior can tell people in their life of their identity, but it must remain secret from the public.

The Mage Superior’s Right Hand is their partner, the vice president if you will. The Right Hand has the ability to check the Mage Superior and the General for suspicious activity and even arrest them. The Right Hand can also be checked by the Mage Superior and the General, but both have to agree to remove them. The Right hand is allowed to be younger than 16 but if they are they must hide their identity from the community until they are of age. They will have the choice to continue to hide their identity if they wish to.

The General commands the Mage Army. The army itself varies from division to division but in many, it is a task force of 10-20 people who have varied abilities. These people are able to neutralize the threat if it isn’t in need of a Mage Superior. The General must be of age or older, which to the Mage community is 16. The General’s identity must also be public.

Before the tournament, all contestants will go through several extensive background checks and a mind-reading session or two to prove that they are not corrupt. Any that are corrupt will not be allowed to participate. All Mages running will cover their faces, use voice spells or modulators, and use fake names. They will not be allowed to share their power rank with everyone, as the community knows of the stereotypes.

In the tournament itself, they will give speeches, and the community will vote. Their favorite ten are entered into a contest of power. They will have duels, and the winner becomes the Mage Superior. The Mage Superior will choose a Right Hand out of the other ten finalists and a General out of the Mage Army. Both choices must be approved by the Mage Superior previous to them as well as the previous Right Hand or General. (Right Hand approves Right hand, etc.)

Marinette was 13 when she entered the tournament. It happened in the summer before the show starts. She was just barely old enough, but she wanted to try. She saw the problems she and her dad faced and decided to do her best to change things.

As an Extreme, she had trouble controlling her abilities. But she found a workaround. Her powers, like all extremes, would explode when they got out of control. The explosions couldn’t hurt her, but it was devastating to anyone in radius. So she found a way to release the energy before she exploded. She points skyward, making sure there was no animals or telephone lines in the way and released the extra power then. It looks like a huge blue wave of power, but when it thins out it just becomes air. Because of this workaround, Marinette felt confident in her abilities should she be voted into the top ten.

She passed the corruption tests with flying colors – after all a thirteen-year-old girl just wanting to help has a very low chance of doing anything selfishly. She got armor and a blue cape that matched her magic, her code name being, “Blue.”

Her speech was entirely factual. She talked about what most of the other’s wouldn’t – the death rate of Extremes, what Scarces faced in society, and she listed off statistics and facts and accounts from her supporters. She also gave statistics on the Typical and Unique types. She did so for Typicals to fight against he boring stigma and gain votes from them, but she also destroyed the reputation of Uniques. She stated the facts about them, not meaning to attack them, but many Mages saw it as such.

She was the second-place contestant, first being the previous mage. That mage also happened to be her first battle. She won it, quite easily in fact.

Eight of the other mages were using potions and enchantment, but she only used her Distinctive powers. This made her win most of them easily. All except one. The seventh placer, a Mage going by Red, was on the same power level as her, though his power was Psychokinesis. It was him and Marinette battling for Mage Superior in the end, as they were the only two using Distinctive powers and the two most powerful.

Marinette wasn’t able to beat him on power alone and used her intelligence to win the nearly hour-long battle. Afterward, she released her magic. She helped her opponent, who was on the verge of an explosion, release his extra magic as well. He was shocked at how much it helped and thanked her over and over again.

When Blue became Mage Superior, she decided on Red to be her Right Hand. Red told her quietly that he hadn’t even been expecting to get as far as he did, but Marinette told him that he deserved to. She decided on her General, then the three revealed their identities to one another.

Needless to say, Marinette and Marc were quite shocked.

The general, Marc’s older sister Darya, laughed at them.

The three of them were all Extremes, the first time in history that ever happened.

Marinette and Marc start off the school year as best friends.

Marinette makes a Head of Brewery and a Head of Enchantment position in her advisors. She fills the seats with Juleka and Sabrina, or Purple and Orange as they’re code-named.

Many Uniques don’t like the new Mage Superior. They don’t like that Blue wants to make Scarces and Extremes ‘better’ (aka equal because many of them don’t realize their privilege). They start acting out, attacking other Mages. Marinette has General Darya deal with most of them, though she and Marc step in when they can.

This is kind of where it gets messy because I have a lot of different versions in my head of this au. In some, she reveals the Mage community to France and in some, she doesn’t. Sometimes she has to save her class from someone before transforming so she reveals herself as Mage Superior. In some Adrien joins the Delta team aka the army and in some, he doesn’t even have powers. I’ll just generalize the events after this.

-Mari realizes that her miraculous helps her control her magic because she has to fight to access more when she wears it, so when she takes it off she can control more

-she makes jewelry for other extremes that are enchanted by Tikki so they can learn to control their magic better, many more become more comfortable with using magic

-she, after Orange and Purple become popular, asks them to reveal that they are Scarce users. Juleka does, as she isn’t ashamed, though Sabrina doesn’t at first. There’s a public shock, but as more and more famous and influential people reveal that they’re Scarce, the public opinion of them begins to brighten

-Mari only ever hired typical entertainers to help fight the idea that they’re boring

-with the statistics that uniques cause the most trouble, many of them begin to divide. Those who want to improve and be better and stop being high and mighty, and those who despise the new Mage Superior for tainting their name. The latter usually act out and are arrested for treason, and the former become better friends in society

-Mari destroys Mage stereotypes in France, and soon very few people care about the labels people have

-when she notices people incoming from other divisions, she shares her ideas and techniques with other leaders. Many of them approve, and she gives them her jewelry for free

-Marinette revolutionizes the mage world in seven years

-When she’s 20, many more people have joined the tournament

-She and Marc are reelected into their positions as they won again, but those whose ideas she liked Marinette hired as advisors for her and Marc

-Marinette reveals herself to those she trusts (her parents knew from the beginning) and makes sure that nobody knows the Mage Superior and LB are the same person

-Marinette doesn’t run again when she’s 27. Her fashion company is flourishing and she’s already left her mark on the Mage world, so she decides to focus on her nonmagic life a little more

-Marc becomes Mage Superior after that until he’s 34

-Juleka becomes the 10th person to make a perfect luck potion, and the youngest to do so as well, and she revolutionizes potion-making. She makes many more potions and other potions easier to make

-While there are always going to be a few bad eggs, the mage world is forever changed to be more accepting

And yea that’s it thanks for reading

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the following work(s):
> 
> Marinette Deserves Better: A Saltinette Fic by OverEnthusiastic  
The Sorceress AU by my-miraculous-headcanons on Tumblr


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